Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Combo Audio

Urbana, Illinois Combo Audio released the classic 80's single "Romanticide" in 1982 on Secret Records and an EP on EMI in 1983 before disappearing from the scene. When listening to the band's brand of New Romantic Synth Pop you'd think the band was from the U.K. and not America's heartland. The band was a big part of the Champaign-Urbana music scene and opened for U2 in 1982 at the University of Illinois Auditorium. The version of "Romanticide" on the download page is the original single version. It was rerecorded for the EP and the EP version can be found on the "Living in Oblivion: The 80's Greatest Hits, Vol 1 collection.

14 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, love the page, but unfortunately I could not completely download the Audio Combo file Romanticide. It only gave me the first 6 seconds. I beleive this is the original version I've been looking for and would love to get it from you. Thanks!

Always enjoyed Combo Audio coming over to Springfield and playing our place, Crow's Mill. Of all the bands that came through all those years, it was CA that we thought would make it. Well, they did in our book.

Hi all-This is former Comboist Tom Broeske. A friend just mailed me this link and it's FAB! Thanks for hipping me to the Oblivion compilation, I'll have to pick that up. I am still in the Midwest and playing-check www.seanmichaeldargan.com.I'll forward this to Mr. Kellogg with whom I've recently re-connected with. Cheers!

I heard Combo Audio on Sirius Radio just a minute ago, and thought at first it might be Alphaville! Very cool Euro-Pop sound, CA. I may have to buy a CD or two. I had never heard of Combo Audio and did a quick search and found this great site. Thanks for the resource!

My band, The Hip Chemists, played a gig with Combo Audio once at Hangar Nine in Carbondale. For 5 minutes we were the hot band in town, and they contacted us about opening for them, I assume to help bolster their already good draw into a packed house. They played in C'dale a lot. By about the fourth or fifth time, Richard, the owner of Hanger, put their name on the marquee as "Combo Loudo." We got a kick out of it at the time, as I'm sure they did. They were fucking loud as hell. I can't really remember how the gig went other than that they wouldn't move their drums or amps for our stuff and we played on about the front third of the stage, which we weren't used to. It pissed me off at the time, but prepared me for my move to LA where bands didn't give a fuck about each other. CA were really good live, I particularly remember Neuhouse's incredible whammy bar use. This was before the Floyd Rose came out, and he had a mustang whammy on a Tele, or something weird like that, lots of effects, and did some incredible sounds with the whammy. He had obviously seen Adrian Belew around that time. All the hot guitar players were listening to the King Crimson "Discipline" album, but he was the first person I saw really incorporate a lot of whammy and effects into New Wave pop the way Belew was. Unfortunately, when the Floyd Rose bridge came out, the hair metal thing took it over, so clever use of it got overshadowed by bullshit, and then no one fucking wanted one. It did seem like Combo Audio would make it big, but they almost played too well to be a pop band, they did a lot of jamming, etc. Rufus Thomas had played with fucking Miles Davis, so he was a monster player (they all were) and at times were almost a new wave jam band. I think we were all seriously jealous of these guys, they'd sweep into town with great outfits and playing like motherfuckers with good equipment, and we were poor student bands doing the best we could but we really looked like garagers compared to these guys. They had their shit together and seemed to really be ready to break. When you hear the Romanticide record the production really doesn't do justice to the power these guys had live, they really blew the roof off.

What is John Kellogg doing these days? Such a talented artist and the band was awesome. I saw them in Carbondale way back when I was young. I thought they had the talent to really make it big, what happened? Where is Kellogg and the band now and what are they doing?

Hi, I'm the Richard that owned Hangar 9 from 1980-2000, in partnership with my starter wife.Combo Audio was an excellent band, could have gone all the way, had they been in the right place at the right time. Angus was well known in Cdale, having gone to school at SIU, and played in several local bands, notably several versions of Stryder (I was the keyboardist) featuring 'Kat' Fields. Angus also was known for taking the stage at Shryock Auditorium with Stanley Clarke in a low frequency shootout. There was no clear winner.Cheers, Richard

I enjoyed seeing Combo Audio at Mabel's and um...First Street (?) a few times. Great live show. I found this site after having "Mommy Gave Me Valium" popped into my head out of the blue. Is there a recording of that song floating around?

Combo Audio has a website www.comboaudio.com. Fans and the uninitiated should check it out. It has videos - live and the big production version of Romanticide. My favorite tune - Hi Fidelity could be playing right now. John Kellogg settled in CA and I think can be contacted through that website.

Hey...it's Rick Neuhaus here. Nice to see that we were noticed and remembered. John has a lot of songs that deserve a second life. The 80's was a great time for us. As a band, I thought the song "Military English" represented us most accurately...especially a live, jammed out version!

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The purpose of this site is to give exposure to great music that never had a chance to be heard but should have. My goal is to share these relatively unknown bands and send you on a desperate search to find hard-to-find, expensive singles and lps. If you are the creator or copyright owner of a song and would like me to remove the file, please let me know. It is not my intention to violate copyrights.